Thought it was alright, tho had issues.
While it does continue from the first game fine from a storytelling aspect, main issue for me was the pacing, or that it felt kinda long between story bits (despite the length) which kinda disconnected me from the overall story in this installment. Problem mainly coming down to the gameplay, battles lasted too long and a few other things, tho Boss battles were handled well in this diff gameplay
Last cutscene sequence(s) was brilliant tho and heard good things abt 3

Well it’s a start ig.
Just a bunch of shit game mechanics most of the time and the plot wasn’t interesting enough 90% of the time to make up for that, still a lot left to go through so hope it’s better

Extra thoughts: Never grasped me, felt incredibly bare bones, just go one world to another looking for the girl w/o much reason of the worlds themselves being there, u just go thru, oh Kairi isn’t here, next planet, rinse repeat. The main characters weren’t interesting, didn’t help 2 of em were Donald and goofy. Villians felt extremely underutilized, they were antags w the body of Disney Villians instead of embodying the Disney villian and integrating that into the story, they could’ve made an original design and it would serve the same purpose

Most of the time I can usually see why people tend to like a game when I don't, this time around I really really struggle to see that. For me the game has 0 redeemable qualities. The gameplay is almost as bad as the first, if not the same level. A slower hack slash that has a shitty parry/guard mechanic and no dodge mechanic for most of the game, just doesn't do it at all for me. The story for half of it is just retelling of disney movies? Horrible build up and the revisits felt completely redundant and didn't offer anything worth it. Build up to the final world didn't feel like it existed. Obviously you're supposed to take in the context of Re:chain of memories and 358/2, but finding those boring and uninteresting, it doesn't help the narrative at all here. Antagonist group is just there and don't feel as developed. I've voiced my complaints about the disney characters before, but genuinely, what is their point? The original characters like Sora, Roxas, Kairi, etc. just aren't interesting. All the story bit happen in the last few hours of the game, one 'good' moment doesn't change the rest of the games, nor was the ending parts rewarding either.

7.5/10
TLDR: Great plot with some good SOL bits here and there but the rest of the SOL events and the volume of them and the format of it lets down the VN a bit
I feel this score might be a bit generous cuz it feels like I have a few problems with the VN, I'll talk about the bad and the good though. I found some of the SOL bits boring and dragged, only enjoyed the School Trio, Rin, Caren, Taiga and some of Rider's SOL bits. The format of the VN doesn't really help with it either, was not a fan of the "choose your event" style of the VN as it kind of made it where you are going through dregs of SOL before getting to a plot event and by the time I got there I felt a bit drained. So in short, the plot events were just a bit far inbetween and the SOL should have been more spread out across the VN and I think I would have enjoyed the SOL a lot more. Though I did find the plot events when they came around interesting and didn't actually have any problems with that in itself. Really really like the new character editions in Caren, Angra Mainyu and Bazett. The last segment bit was great to read in one sitting. Maybe overtime my rating is prone to go up as I think about it more but I think this is a good rating for now

I have no idea where to start. Seeing all the characters grow over the course of 4 VNs was great, don't think that wasn't the case for any of the main cast, even Rikka who I disliked for most of the series lmao. The relationships formed and how they grew was definitely my favourite aspect. The mystery was well built up across the VNs, from the start there was always something built upon, whether it was subtle or in your face. The references to literature, movies, or the secondary meanings to different flowers added so much meaning to different situations throughout, brought me into the series even more. I feel I have so much to say about this, I could keep rambling about it, or just not have the ability to sum it up with words